What are the customers’ three brains?

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Salespeople believe that many of their customers don’t even have one brain, let alone three!

In this lesson, Simon Hazeldine MSc. – an international consultant in the areas of sales, negotiation and leadership – explains that customers still have only one brain, but it’s the three areas of the brain of which salespeople and business people need to be aware.

Grant Leboff: So one of the things you talk about Simon, in the book, is your customer’s three brains. Most salespeople think hasn’t got one brain! perhaps you can not explain that to us?

Simon Hazeldine: Let me elaborate. It is just one brain. It’s three areas of the brain that salespeople and business people need to be aware of, and probably if I can just to just use my model brain here by way of illustration. So the first part of the brain, from an evolutionary point of view, that came into being is what’s called the reptilian brain and it’s named the reptilian brain because it shares the same properties as the entire brain of primitive creatures like; snakes, lizards, reptiles it’s very instinctive, unconscious, selfish, survival orientated, keep me away from danger, move towards pleasure, food and reproduction of a species. Then the next part, the neo mammalian brain or the emotional centre of the brain with the limbic system is where most of the emotional processing takes place, and the last part to evolve is the cortex, which is the more the more rational part of the brain. Those first two parts have a huge influence, and they have greater influence over the cortex than vice versa.

So we’ve all experienced, for example, saying or doing something that we later come to regret when we’re feeling kind of emotionally aroused, angry upset, so on and so forth. So to sell successfully we need to be making that sort of more primitive part feel safe, so that it’s more receptive and comfortable, targeting the emotional content of our messages – because a lot of buying decisions have a strong emotional component – and then obviously we also do still need to be giving that sort of intellectual, more logical content to our customers as sales people.

Grant Leboff: Then you also talk about the mirror neurons as well. So how do they play a part in what you’ve just described?

Simon Hazeldine: There is still some degree of controversy about mirror neurons and different schools of thought. But one theory is that enable us to understand how other people are feeling. So they are believed to come into effect, for example, if you’re watching sport. If somebody is tackled very hard, do you sort of instinctively feel the same thing? One theory is that those are the mirror neurons, their purpose is to help us to understand the emotion and how people are feeling. So to some degree our emotional state is also very important in how we come across to our customer. So in a calm and confident emotional state the customer will kind of pick that up and probably respond accordingly.

Grant Leboff: So, reading body language and rapport and those kind of things, coming from those mirror neurons?

Simon Hazeldine: Potentially yes. When a when a brain meets a stranger for the first time – when your customer meets you for the first time – that more primitive region is in a minor form of threat response, it’s the uncomfortable feeling. So we need to get that part of the brain to calm down and be comfortable. Then the brain of the customer will become more receptive to to what to what follows.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order make it more readable.